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If so if it might be the world would be my toy, to play with as I like! "If that could happen, kings and emperors would have to cringe and crawl to me, like my hordes of serfs all over this broad land.
They could commute the labor due to their owner by a fixed sum of money, after annual payment of which, the villein worked for himself. His master, therefore, was not his absolute proprietor. The chattel had a beneficial interest in a portion of his own flesh and blood. The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs.
The one is based upon the pure principles of rational liberty; the other, under the name of freedom, revives the ancient European system of barons and villains, nobles and serfs. Indeed, the state of society which existed among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors was far more tolerable than that of many portions of our republican confederacy.
But there were always some craftsmen on every estate, either attached as serfs to the big house, or living on manses of their own, and good landowners tried to have as many clever craftsmen as possible.
"But how did it begin?" "It may be said to have started about 1860. The emancipation of the serfs produced a sort of fever. Every one looked for change, but it was in the universities, the seminaries, and among the younger professional men that it first began.
Petersburg; they cried and shouted vivas to their empress who to-day accorded to them the splendid spectacle of the knouting of some respectable ladies and gentlemen! Ah, that was a very gracious and condescending empress to provide once more a delightful spectacle for her serfs at the expense of the nobility! That was an empress after their own hearts real Russian blood!
They were broken creatures, with the dazed look of lost animals, and four of them had been peasants in Saskia's estates. Alexis spoke to them in their own language. "In my grandfather's time," he said, "you were serfs. Then there came a change, and for some time you were free men.
When in any country the small-farmer class is being squeezed off the land; when its labourers are slaves or serfs; when huge tracts are kept waste to minister to pleasure; when the shibboleth of art is on every man's lips, but ideas of true beauty in very few men's souls; when the business-sharper is the greatest man in the city, and lords it even in the law courts; when class-magistrates, bidding for high office, deal out justice according to the rank of the criminal; when exchanges are turned into great gambling-houses, and senators and men of title are the chief gamblers; when, in short, 'corruption is universal, when there is increasing audacity, increasing greed, increasing fraud, increasing impurity, and these are fed by increasing indulgence and ostentation; when a considerable number of trials in the courts of law bring out the fact that the country in general is now regarded as a prey, upon which any number of vultures, scenting it from afar, may safely light and securely gorge themselves; when the foul tribe is amply replenished by its congeners at home, and foreign invaders find any number of men, bearing good names, ready to assist them in robberies far more cruel and sweeping than those of the footpad or burglar' when such is the tone of society, and such the idols before which it bends, a nation must be fast going down hill.
The coloured tapestry which she and her women had embroidered with representations of their gods ODIN, THOR, and FREIA, as they were called were hung up; the serfs were ordered to clean and polish the old shields with which the walls were to be decorated; cushions were laid on the benches; and dry logs of wood were heaped on the fireplace in the centre of the hall, so that the pile might be easily lighted.
These crimes upon Irish industry surpassed a thousand-fold the later English attempts upon the industries of the American colonies. Under the Code, and through the extreme poverty produced thereby, substantially all the land of Ireland passed out of the hands of the people. They became mere serfs upon the soil. Their tribute was paid through a rapacious agent to a foreign landlord.
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